Friday, August 09, 2013

Dr. Theodore Wymyslo, director of the Ohio Department of Health, notified the facility in a letter dated Aug. 2 that it had 30 days to request an administrative hearing. Ms. Pollock said that if Capital Care does not respond within that time, the health department will proceed with revocation.

Terrie Hubbard, identified by the health department as Capital Care Network of Toledo’s owner, did not return phone calls or an email seeking comment.

However, as of Thursday morning, Capital Care was open and seeing patients.

This variation, in turn, gives us more data on the original question that my column asked: What happens to a modern society when abortion is restricted? And I don’t think that either Pollitt or Lemieux offered much of a rebuttal to my suggestion that Europe’s variations and their apparent consequences pose a problem for two commonplace pro-choice assumptions: That restrictions on abortion don’t actually reduce abortion rates (which appears to be true in neither the U.S. nor in Europe), and more importantly, that any restrictions on abortion are necessarily threats to female professional advancement and bodily health.

Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed. Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria.

Thursday, August 08, 2013

Salon has a piece by Katie McDonough in which fetal pain is called “a lie.” McDonough’s cited sources for this conclusion is one review of studies by abortion advocates and late-term abortionist Anne Davis, who is also the consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health. Davis claims children (born or unborn) can’t feel pain until 26 weeks. This might be one reason Davis is so opposed to fetal pain legislation.

“Patients are now asking me about fetal pain. This was not happening 15 years ago,” Davis says. “When you’re sitting in your office with a woman who is 22 weeks into a pregnancy with a severe fetal anomaly — she’s depressed, she’s stressed and now she’s worried, ‘Is my baby going to feel pain?’ It’s just another thing these women have to struggle with. And why? These are created concerns. They are not based in science, they are based in politics.”

In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson tries to defend Wendy Davis and attack Erick Erickson for his “Abortion Barbie” tweet. I’m not surprised Davidson doesn’t include Davis’ actual quote. Here’s how Davidson describes the exchange:

Kermit Gosnell was the doctor convicted on murder charges after running an unsafe, illegal operation. Davis had answered a question about him and, after saying that she didn’t know much about the case, had gotten a fact about it wrong. (It had to do with whether Gosnell’s clinic was licensed as an ambulatory-surgical center.) Davis, who has a degree from Harvard Law School, rightly pointed out its disconnect from the Texas bill.

Had gotten a fact wrong about it? Yeah, she got wrong the only thing she said about it (her incorrect claim that Gosnell was operating a surgical ambulatory facility) and I don’t know how you could think there is a “disconnect” between tightening regulations on abortion clinics and the reality that Gosnell was allowed to operate without being inspected for more than a decade.

Yesterday, an ambulance was called to Mississippi’s only abortion clinic.

The Clarion-Ledger reached out to Jackson Women’s Health Organization owner Diane Derzis but she declined to comment.

Federal law "provides that hospitals accepting federal funds may not discriminate against a physician because that physician has participated in or refused to participate in abortions," the state Justice Department said in its filing in federal court.

According to experts on federal law, if doctors can prove they were not granted privileges specifically because they perform the procedure, the hospital systems — Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Columbia St. Mary's Health System and Hospital Sisters Health System — could lose federal dollars in the form of research and public health grants.

I don't know what happened in the Gosnell case. But I do know that it happened in an ambulatory surgical center. And in Texas changing our clinics to that standard obviously isn't going to make a difference.

Only Gosnell’s clinic was obviously not a surgical ambulatory facility. But you know whose is? Texas abortionist Douglas Karpen. The same abortionist who was exposed for killing infants who survived abortion (just like Kermit Gosnell) and has been called the Texas Gosnell. Either Davis got the two confused or isn't aware they're different people.

He said the amount of Women's Health Specialists' business related to abortions is less than 5 percent.

"It's not some abortion clinic that's cranking out abortions," he said. "They provide all kind of health services. Ninety-five percent of their services are non-abortion-related."

Still, he said, he did negotiate with Women's Health Specialists to place a "tight" restriction on the number of abortions that they could perform at the location. He declined, however, to specify the number.

"I didn't want them to turn into an abortion clinic," he said. "I want to do a good job as a landlord. I'm surprised that anyone is concerned about this."

The
IMB, in conjunction with the Revenue’s Customs Service and gardaí,
monitors and investigates instances of the illegal supply of such
produces via the internet, “and actively enforces against suspected
breaches of the law”, a spokeswoman said.....

A total of 259
tablets have been detained in 10 consignments since the start of 2013.
Of these, 256 contained misoprostol and three mifepristone.

Last
year, 487 abortifacient tablets were seized, of which 471 contained
misoprostol and 16 mifepristone, from 25 detentions. A total of 635
tablets were seized in 2011 from 28 detentions.

Friday, August 02, 2013

Another North Carolina abortion clinic failed their inspection. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services found the clinic wasn’t complying with 23 rules.

In addition to other findings, the survey found the facility: • Failed to maintain anesthesia (nitrous oxide gas) delivery systems in good working condition, with torn masks and tubing held together with tape. This could lead to patients not receiving the intended dosage and risk patients not being fully sedated during surgical procedures, leading to pain and physical harm. • Failed to ensure emergency equipment had weekly checks to ensure the equipment was suitable for use in patient care and failed to ensure that emergency medicine wasn't expired. • Failed to have a resuscitator available. • Failed to sweep and mop the operating room floor and failed to properly clean operating room beds. • Failed to have a director of nursing responsible and accountable for all nursing services. • Failed to have an agreement/contract with an anesthetist or anesthesiologist. • Failed to have an agreement/contract with a registered pharmacist to assure appropriate methods, procedures and controls for obtaining, dispensing, and administering drugs.

FEMCARE, Inc.'s last inspection was on January 16, 2007, a follow up inspection of a previous survey, which found the clinic in violation of personnel and quality assurance rules.

Kirsten Powers has a column in the Washington Post on the Delaware Planned Parenthood whistleblowers.

After Vasikonis and Mitchell-Werbrich aired their complaints at the first state Senate hearing in June, the abortion-rights Web site “RH Reality Check” said that, “The nurses’ allegations have not been substantiated by any other source.” How many sources are needed? What better “source” is there than two abortion-rights nurses who saw it first hand? Vasikonis told me, “I am a liberal, and I have been shocked that liberal Democrats, who I thought had supported women, would turn their backs on women’s health safety just to support abortion rights.”

Yes, it is sad that the people who are always lecturing us about how they are the only ones who care about women ignored the pleas of their own employees. Until they went public, of course. Makes you wonder how many other clinics are operating like this.

The New York Times is covering the fetal pain legislation in their typical manner today. I did find this quote by Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights to be notable.

The Supreme Court, including Justice Kennedy, has repeatedly affirmed viability as the point at which the state’s interest in protecting life outweighs a woman’s right to control her body, Ms. Northup noted.

“There is no other line that is workable,” she said. “It is an appropriate line to draw.”

Thursday, August 01, 2013

Mollie Hemingway has a great point on the national media turning a blind eye towards Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid fraud.

It’s so confusing how a private breast cancer charity choosing not to give Planned Parenthood a couple hundred thousand dollars generated thousands of stories but that same abortion group paying a $1.4 million $4.3 million fraud settlement doesn’t generate hardly any.

Is it me or is it really odd to be using a hula-hoop while holding a sign “I Do Not Regret My Abortion”?

Also, think about how thoughtless abortion clinic owner Diane Derzis' comment is regarding whether she’s wrong about the morality of abortion. If she's wrong it may be between Derzis and God but she’d be partially responsible for the death of thousands of people and the possibility of that doesn't faze her.

“It would be a great impact because some of those women will have nowhere to go,” said Gerri Laster, administrative director of Reproductive Services.

It’s one of the few clinics where women in the region can get abortions.

Thirty percent of the El Paso clinic’s patients are women from Mexico. Some live just across the border in Ciudad Juarez, but others travel from the interior of Mexico, including Aguascalientes, Durango and Sonora.